


synchronize

by ninemoons42



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Aftermath, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banter, Community: pacificrimkink, Cuddling & Snuggling, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, First Dates, Holding Hands, Hong Kong, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Meme, Sharing a Meal, Shore Leave, Slice of Life, Sparring, always-a-girl!Raleigh, sleep cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-16
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 09:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/885663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how they work together and fight together and come together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt at the Pacific Rim Kink Meme: [always-a-girl!Raleigh/Mako, anything goes](http://pacificrimkink.livejournal.com/350.html?thread=25694#t25694).

There are other exercise rooms in the Shatterdome, but this is the one that Raleigh likes the most: it's properly warm here, instead of being suffocatingly humid. She's had quite enough of cold weather, thank you.

Of course, the inconvenient part is that it's way down in the sub-sub-sub-basements, but she'll take that as a good thing, too. No one, she thinks, is going to go down here and watch her go through her forms. That means she can dress much more comfortably for the part. She knows how to wrap her own chest so the binding is firm and supportive at the same time, allowing her to move freely and much more quickly than she ever would were she in normal training gear. 

Still, she mutters unhappily to herself when she sees the new rip in her already tattered workout pants. She'll have to sew them up when she has a free moment, or maybe Tendo will let her work next to him when he takes another shift in the comms room, because he doesn't make fun of her clumsy stitches.

She hopes he never does or else she'll stop offering to mend his shirts. It's the least she can do for someone who looks after her when she's all armored up and strapped into that gyroscope gone mad that is a Jaeger cockpit.

Raleigh turns on the mats to face each corner of the room, and touches her right fist to her left palm, four times. 

The fifth salute she performs toward the closed door. Yancy used to come in and join her when she was in physical training. He never pulled his punches with her. She smiles, bittersweet and tiny, remembering his large hand on her shoulder, helping her apply ice after a particularly hard session. 

Now she has to deal with her own injuries by herself.

Just after she turns her back on the door, though, it clanks open, and quicker than she can think Raleigh runs over, cocks her fists, grimacing at the thought of her privacy being invaded. Never mind that they're all supposed to be working together here; this is space just for herself. 

The door creaks open, and she braces herself to throw the first punch - but even as she moves there's an open hand moving towards her, gentle rapid deflection, and when she's stopped in her tracks Mako is smiling at her. Her workout gear is a little newer, a little more intact. Muddy, though, and Raleigh almost feels sympathetic. Mako's idea of training includes running, and that must be hell when the weather's all rain all the time.

"Nice grip," Raleigh says. "Hard enough to bruise. You do that to everyone?"

Mako grins. "You can ask Aleksis, but I don't know if Sasha will let him tell that story."

Raleigh stares, and then she steps back and starts to laugh. She shakes out her hand, too, which is already doing the pins and needles thing to her. "I'm really going to have to take your word for it, aren't I?"

"Yes."

"Fine by me."

She doesn't question what Mako's doing there, and certainly doesn't question that Mako bows to the four corners of the room before she takes up a position on the mats. Open hands, one to block and the other to strike. 

Raleigh used to be alone in tending her injuries, in the terrible years after Yancy's death. Now, though - now is a different story. Maybe Raleigh might be able to ask someone else for help now. Maybe Raleigh might be able to help someone. She's not the only one who gets thrown around in Gipsy Danger. 

There's Mako, too.

"You come here every day at the same time to train," Mako says after a moment. "Will you permit me to join you from here on in?"

"I should have told you I trained here," Raleigh says, and she drops into a combat crouch. "Sorry about that."

"Make it up to me if you can. You can start by defeating me."

Raleigh grins. "You're on."


	2. Chapter 2

Raleigh sighs and takes the filled tray from the counter, and she waits until she's moving out of the mess hall to make a face at the food. Pasta and potatoes and some kind of scrambled eggs, beans and tofu and unidentified greens, slivers of meat in a dark brown sauce that never tastes quite like gravy. 

Okay, so they're in between supply runs, so they're waiting for food, so they're eating the same things day in and day out. Food isn't fuel, she thinks. Food is something to enjoy. What she'd give for a sandwich, with real bread and a little mayo, a good sharp slice of cheese. She misses apples and oranges. She even misses chocolate, and she's never had much of a sweet tooth in the first place. 

"I miss fish," says a voice behind her, and Raleigh waits for Mako to step to her side.

"Lots of things we can't eat any more," Raleigh says in agreement. "I'm trying to forget so I don't kill myself missing those things."

"Not possible," Mako mutters.

"I know."

They pass through one of the service corridors, and then through a series of doors to the giant hangar. Bays for five Jaegers. Only one of them holds a functional machine; the rest are under repair and under construction.

She follows Mako and they weave through the crowds going to dinner. Two sets of boots, one set of echoing footsteps. 

When Mako hangs a left, Raleigh blinks, and says, "We're not going on the lift?"

Mako's bobbed hair swings back and forth when she shakes her head. "If we can't change dinner, we can change where we eat it. And I know just the place."

Raleigh smiles. "Okay, lead on."

Closer and closer to a familiar monolith of a shadow, until Raleigh has to crane her head in order to look at the familiar decal on a familiar chest plate. Gipsy Danger looms over the two of them, almost whole again. The work on her arm will be completed soon and then they can start testing it.

Mako smiles, and sits down right next to the Jaeger's left foot, and she is tiny and the Jaeger is massive and Raleigh can't stop smiling when she joins the other pilot.

There is something in the mechanical movement of Mako's arm that makes Raleigh think of shoveling food in, and she sighs heavily and does the same: she tries to forget the taste of her dinner, and she tries to think about staying alive and staying warm.

Mako mutters something that sounds like "soup" and Raleigh nods, sympathizing. "Maybe we could go out for that next time they let us spend a night outside this place."

"It will have to be a specific kind of soup," Mako says. "This place has strange ideas about food."

"Oh, yeah, that's true." Raleigh makes another face. "I can understand why Newt complains about the restaurants."

"I wonder what it will take for Gottlieb to cook for us once again."

"He knows his beef at least," Raleigh says with a grin. "Yeah, we're going to have to save up for another good meal, that is, if he's still willing."

"I will tell Tendo to contribute to the pot," Mako says, and she laughs and slurps up her pasta and then sticks her tongue out. "Ugh. I know that I should not be complaining, but - ugh."

"I'll drink to that." Raleigh cracks the carton of milk open, and toasts Mako with it. "To staying alive."

"To staying alive long enough to eat a good dinner," Mako says, and after that she laughs and Raleigh drinks that sound in too.


	3. Chapter 3

There's a loud and persistent thrum in Raleigh's bones that she knows isn't entirely a figment of her imagination. The neural bridges exist mostly in the mind, in the nerves and synapses, in the links of the connections between pilots and their Jaeger and each other. At the same time, the neural bridges are mediated in physical machinery: the wires and cables running all over the cockpit, the layers of their drivesuits, the armatures that hold them suspended.

With the adrenaline rush already dropping away, the thrum is all Raleigh can hear as they're lifted back into ready position within the Shatterdome. 

She hears the Jaeger techs and maintenance teams bantering as they approach in their biohazard suits, and listens to the last clicks and murmurs of the Gipsy Danger AI as she confirms that the danger is past and runs systems checks, and none of the words are getting through to her.

There's a step, a nearby movement, and she's too wiped to do much more than stare blankly when she recognizes the face of the woman standing before her, when she notices the eyes peering into her own with something like concern. 

Mako, thank goodness, does not ask the obvious question. The first thing she says that Raleigh can hear is, "You are not all right."

"That's what I like to call an understatement," Raleigh says, and she's grateful when Mako sighs and grasps her wrists in careful but strong hands, and helps her step out of the controls. "Sorry about this." Her nerves hurt. She's not injured and she knows it, knows that it's the Jaeger that got beaten up. She knows that Mako pulled her through this one through sheer force of willpower, that Mako's voice was the voice shouting the commands and that she would have followed those commands to the ends of the earth, back to the breach if need be.

She wobbles, anyway, and she leans into Mako's shoulder when they step onto the lift to get back down to the hangar's floor, and she turns away from the applause and the encouragement and the high fives and the shouting. She covers her face, fingertips just barely hanging on to her helmet, and she follows where Mako goes.

The reciprocating question comes to her as they descend towards the pilots' quarters. "Mako? Are you hurt?" 

A quiet exhalation, loud in the corridor where there is no one to get in their way. "My head mostly. Vertigo. It is an old ailment, and nothing to be concerned about. We move too much in the Jaeger, that is all. Too much sensory input to deal with."

"How do you deal with that? Quiet? Darkness? Medicines? I can ask Gottlieb to get you something...."

"Thank you, Raleigh. I will let you know if I should need the pills. Can you stand on your own?"

"Barely." Raleigh grits her teeth, shifts her weight back onto her own two feet, and then half-falls and half-leans on the bulkhead as Mako struggles with the door to her own quarters. 

The clang of the door opening is shockingly loud, and Mako's voice is nearly too quiet in the ensuing echoes. "Come in," she says to Raleigh.

This isn't her first time in Mako's quarters, but it is her first time coming here when they're coming down from the stress and the high of the fight, and it takes Raleigh a moment to reorient herself. The place is a mirror image of her own, and there are delicate things strewn about on the shelves, and there is a red coverlet on Mako's bunk, intricate shapes in tiny dots.

"Here," Mako says as she drops onto the foot of the bed. She pats the coverlet next to her. Raleigh goes, and takes off her boots with difficulty. 

"Are you sure you'd like me to be here?" Raleigh asks.

"I am sure. Now, come," and then there's a push to her shoulder and the next thing Raleigh knows is that she's lying down, and she shifts around to be more comfortable around the phantom sensations of bruises up and down her left side.

Warmth up and down her back, and an arm around her waist, and Mako breathing against her shoulder.

"Calm down, Raleigh," Mako murmurs. "We are not connected to each other here, but we are together. I hoped that this would comfort you."

Raleigh freezes and then she sighs, melts backward into the embrace, pulls Mako's arm so it's wound more tightly around her torso. Her hand holds on to Mako's wrist in a mirror image of the gesture inside Gipsy Danger. She's not pulling Mako out of something; she's pulling Mako closer. "It's helping, yes.

"And you? Is this okay - "

Words are clumsy things, Raleigh thinks, a little furious with herself and a little distrustful of her senses. She doesn't know how Mako is now so close that she can feel every breath and every tremble, but it feels good, and she can't stop leaning back and Mako can't seem to stop pulling her in.

They shift and shiver on the bed, and in the end Raleigh is holding Mako's hand over her own heart, and she wants to feel more of the boom of Mako's pulse.

"Sleep, Raleigh," Mako murmurs after a while.

"Only if you will, Mako," Raleigh answers, slow but clear.

"All right."

"Okay."

The last thing Raleigh feels is pressure against her shoulder blade, and she sleepily raises Mako's hand to her mouth, and Mako's fingertip is rough against her lips.


	4. Chapter 4

When Raleigh unfolds the note taped to the outside of the door, there's a moment in which she thinks that she's never actually seen Mako's spidery handwriting before.

The message is short and to the point: _Meet me at the doors after 1500 local time. Wear boots._

Raleigh raises an eyebrow, but there's no one in the corridor to question. A glance at the opposite door shows that all is dark in Mako's quarters; a glance at her wristwatch shows that it's still the lunch hour for the first duty shift at the Shatterdome. 

She rolls her shoulders absently, working out a series of kinks in the muscles around her left shoulder. There's still some discoloration of the skin when she glances into the mirror next to her bed, but the bruises barely hurt, now, and she has most of today and tomorrow at liberty anyway, so she can hope, somewhat, that she won't be aggravating anything.

Of course, anything goes in Hong Kong when they're on something very much like shore leave, and after a moment she shrugs and goes to put on her most comfortable pair of boots. She's walked and run in them and they're perfectly fitted to her feet now, and she barely notices their weight or the clomping sounds they make with each step.

She's dressed for the unexpected rains, a tank top and a long-sleeved tunic that hangs precariously off her shoulders, sturdy trousers; she mentally debates the pros and cons of her leather jacket versus something sturdier and more waterproof, and in the end goes with the slightly shapeless regulation trench coat, though she doesn't bother to button up as she re-secures the door to her quarters.

Gottlieb and Newt are leaning rather comfortably on each other when the elevator doors open to admit her, but that's not what she's looking at: someone is missing from this particular group. "Where's Tendo?" she asks.

Gottlieb shrugs. "He sends his regrets; he won't be joining us tonight. As far as I can tell, he gave up his pass to assist two of the rookies. Adverse reactions to the neural bridges, I believe."

"They're Drift-compatible but there's something about the machinery that's giving them hives," Newt adds. "A boy and a girl, fraternal twins, pretty strange names. Like from out of the comics or something. Pietro and Wanda?"

Raleigh thinks that one over, then lets it go, because she's not really an expert in that side of the technology. Instead, she asks, "And which of you is drinking his share, then?" 

Gottlieb and Newt point to each other, and Raleigh grins and shakes her head, and before she can needle them further they're at ground level, and there's a familiar shape just ahead, a heavy coat and two umbrellas and short dark hair, and sturdy boots.

Raleigh throws a jaunty salute to the two scientists as they move off to who knows where, quietly engrossed in conversation, and goes to stand next to Mako - she submits herself to a brief inspection, Mako's eyes wide open and knowing, and only after Mako smiles to herself does she ask, "Well, am I dressed for the part? Speaking of which, what are you planning, really?"

"A long walk," is Mako's reply. "But a leisurely one."

"Okay," Raleigh says, and she takes the other umbrella when it's offered, and sets off in Mako's wake.

Everyone has to hang on to something on the ferry from Tsing Yi to Hong Kong Island; the waves are rough and unpredictable, and Raleigh has to keep shifting her feet so she can keep herself wedged into a corner, and so Mako can lean on her shoulder. Mako radiates warmth, intense and steady, and Raleigh finds herself leaning into her and staying there, even as they make it to shore. 

She watches everyone as best as she can, but the crowds on Hong Kong Island are easily twice the size of those in Tsing Yi, and they're definitely in more of a hurry.

Mako sets a steady pace, though, and she seems to know exactly where she's going, and Raleigh finds herself content to follow in the other woman's wake - even when the wind picks up and starts driving a fierce rain down.

She watches Mako march down the sidewalk, and is reminded of the strength of her, the ease with which she moves. There's a contrast in Mako of steadiness and grace: she shifts her feet as easily on practice mats as she does now on these streets filling up with puddles; she walks against the crowd and people step out of her way, perhaps because they can see the same determination on her face that Raleigh's become more than familiar with.

It's a long walk through the occasional gust of wind. Raleigh shivers and shifts the umbrella this way and that, using it as a makeshift windbreak. It makes people around her mutter, but the farther they go the fewer people there are on the streets with them.

"Where are we going?" she asks Mako, once, when they're standing at a pedestrian crossing, waiting for the lights to change. 

"Up," Mako says. "Don't worry, we'll be out of the rain in a few minutes."

"How's that?"

There's no answer to that question, except when Mako turns toward a covered pathway: Raleigh blinks, and smiles, and steps onto the escalator at the exact same moment, grateful to put her umbrella away.

Now they can walk side by side, a familiar feeling for Raleigh, for all that they've known each other for a relatively brief time. 

When someone below calls "Coming through", Raleigh makes as if to step down to make way.

"Don't," Mako says, but it's not the word that stops Raleigh in her tracks.

Mako's hand wrapped around hers is small and warm and steady.

When they transition from one escalator to the next, they step even closer to each other so that they're touching from shoulder to wrist.

Mako is a solid weight next to Raleigh, a constant point of reference in a world that's still changing.

Higher and higher, next to each other, and at the sign for Caine Road Raleigh lets herself be tugged off the escalator, keeps holding on to Mako's hand. 

The rain's eased off and there are fewer people walking here, and there are all kinds of interesting shops and signs but Raleigh only has eyes for the woman walking at her side.

There's no need to ask for a destination, Raleigh thinks, as she squeezes Mako's hand once, gently, and she holds her breath until Mako smiles and squeezes back, all without taking her eyes from the road.

Raleigh says, quietly, "Okay," and she follows Mako, stays by Mako's side, as easily as putting one foot in front of the other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much thanks to donutcookie in the XMFC Skype chat for all the information about getting around on Hong Kong Island. Any mistakes about that are mine.


End file.
